Running a business these days has new kinds of risks that we never had to deal with before we moved so much of our business online. Every day you open the newspaper, probably online with a digital version of your local paper, and read of a new cyber attack or cyber criminal creating havoc.
While we all think about the ways to limit our risk in our business by using known vendors, securing our business premises with cameras and passwords to our computer systems, this is a new kind of risk. As more of the attacks seem to focus on extracting money from business owners when their websites and online businesses are held hostage, there are other less known risks for many online retail businesses. Here are three areas you need to look at carefully to lower the risk to your online business.
When Business Goes Mobile
Every summer we see many of the smaller online businesses head out to the great opportunities that street fairs and music festivals have for them. But if you don’t have the best and most secure of mobile payment options in play you can be running a risk to your business.
Since many of these places only offer public Wi-Fi for local mobile devices, you run the risk of having your sales getting hacked. Be sure to talk to your mobile payment dealer about what you can do to minimize this kind of risk before heading out for street festivals and such this year.
Upgrading Risks
While we all know that upgrading our computers in our offices is simply part of the plan, it has its risks as well that every business owner needs to be aware of when planning that update. Old computers, even if you think you have wiped the hard drives, can carry old information about your business you just don’t want out there in the hands of anyone who could use it wrong.
Using a combination of wiping that hard drive with running it through the shredder can go a long way towards making sure that any residual information on that disk is thoroughly unusable by anyone. Be sure to take these steps before tossing that old computer into the recycle bin.
Get into the Cloud
Having all of your business reside on your own hard drives can not only be expensive and cumbersome, it can be risky. Do you know if you have the latest and greatest software releases for all your computers when it comes to security risks? By putting the majority of your business system, if not everything, in the cloud you can mitigate some of the risk.
These huge server farms have more in security then you would ever consider investing in for the simple reason it is part of their business model. So, take some of the risk off your back by sending it to the cloud and letting a bigger and more up to date set of computers take care of that security. Why risk it all when you can move it to a bigger and more secure location that you pay to stay current on every kind of online risk?
